eart ached for the Sauk he was unable to warn of the second
long knife army. A yearning for Redbird and Eagle Feather and Floating
Lily seemed almost to pull his heart from his body. He prayed that they
had safely left the Bad Axe country by now and headed north with Black
Hawk. Probably he would never see them again. Probably the long knives
would kill him. With a sigh, he turned his horse's head in the direction
Wave had pointed.

* * * * *

While his regiment rode by, the long knife war chief, a stocky man with
a long face, thick eyebrows and hard blue eyes, stood by the side of the
trail facing White Bear. He was Colonel Zachary Taylor, he had told
White Bear. A burly, red-faced soldier with a sergeant's three chevrons
on his forearm stood beside Taylor staring at White Bear with open
hatred.

"What are you, a renegade white man?" Taylor demanded. "How come you
speak good English?"

"I am Sauk, Colonel. My name is White Bear. My father was white, and he
took me to be educated among the whites for several years."

"Well, White Bear, what were you doing on this trail? Chasing the white
woman and the boy we just picked up?"

"It was I who brought them to you."

Taylor snorted. "You expect me to believe that?"

"Miss Hale will tell you it is true."

"Well, we already sent her and the boy back to Fort Crawford with an
escort, so that will have to wait. But you do have her name right. Where
are the rest of the Sauk? Trying to cross the Mississippi?"

"I cannot help you, Colonel. Any more than you would give information to
the Sauk, if we captured you."

Taylor's sergeant said, "Sir, let me and a couple of my men take this
half-breed for a stroll in the woods. We'll find out what you want to
know."

"No, Benson, no." Taylor brushed the suggestion aside with an irritated
wave of his hand. "Showing how they can resist torture is a regular game
with Indians. He'll just sing Indian songs till he dies, and listening
to that would be worse agony for you than anything you could do to him."

"Well, then let's shoot the bastard, sir, and be done with him. The
militia don't take no prisoners. Why should we?"

Taylor threw back his head, and even though he was shorter than the
sergeant, managed to look down his nose at him. "We're professional
soldiers, Sergeant. I trust we know how to conduct ourselves better than
the state militia. No, we'll just take him along with us. An Indian who